She goes to work with me every day that I work, but the other day I brought my camera along. Because obviously there can never be too many pictures of Journey. Ok, maybe there can be, but that doesn't stop me from taking them.

Haha believe it or not, this is her happy face! You just can't see the mile a minute bum wiggle in pictures.

"Throw it!" - She's so funny when I bring a toy out. She concentrates so hard and moves/does anything I ask of her in slow motion.

"Bring it back all the way? How 'bout if I just stand here and hold it for a bit instead?"

(don't worry, we don't play hard or long so it's not strenuous - just enough to help her not be too bored)

Uh oh. She's not the most coordinated yet haha

"What do you mean let go? Can't we tug with a tennis ball?"

She's learning to enjoy fetch, slowly but surely. But her favourite game by far is still tug. :-)

Mostly she just lays behind her gate by the till. Keeps her safe from unruly dogs that come in but still allows customers to say hello.

Jess, I hope so! She's not perfect by any means, but I think she's very nice and my handling class instructor really, really likes her as well. So hopefully we do well. I've learned a lot and feel much more confident handling her, and while I still have lots to learn, as does she, our first show isn't until July so we have time. And I didn't buy her as a show dog, so if we totally suck, oh well, but I'm hoping we both do really well.

Today I feel like the most horrible person in the world. Amazing how one little black dog can make me feel so needlessly guilty haha. I don't know what it is about her. I don't feel guilty easily when it comes to the dogs usually. But today I came to work and I left her at home. For the first time ever on a work day since she came home. She was plenty happy to go into her crate with her Peanut Butter Kong, but still, I felt really bad. I'm sure she'll be fine... I've left her home on weekends before and she's fine, but she's my little co-pilot haha. The buses and trains have just been so annoyingly packed lately and mucky, plus there's a ton of salt all over the sidewalks and I'm expecting a super busy day here at work with deliveries, so I felt like it was better just to have her stay home.

In other news: She's doing awesome at Flyball. She's doing side-by-side restrained recalls with another dog now rather than just by herself. And this weekend they're going to give me some homework for things I can do at home with her since of course she's not allowed to do jumping or box work yet.

We 'graduated' from our Intro to Shows handling classes and now we'll just attend drop-ins with him from here on in. The guy/handler who teaches them is a little different, but I learned a lot. Which is much more than I can say for the classes I took with Dance.

I'm really happy with how her left finish is coming along and we're taking heel slowly because I don't want to mess it up, but so far it's nice and tight and 10x better than any of my other dogs' heels. So yay for that, since I was dreading it cause I seem not very good at teaching a nice heel haha.

Other than that, there isn't really much of anything exciting happening. Just enjoying her crazy puppy self! She's definitely a brat, but at the same time she's just so good, too. And I love how snuggly she is. Seeing as the rest of her family who all thew themselves into mine and Fran's laps, I kind of expected it, but it's still nice. She can go from being absolutely nuts and wild one second into the sweetest, cuddliest dog the next without being needy about it. And she's just so happy and joyful all the time. I love being around her. I feel kind of lost without her today.

She's not always perfect though. Yesterday she embarrassed me three times in a row on the way home from work haha. First, we were getting on the bus and she got in the way and I accidentally lightly stepped on her toe and she screamed, in front of everybody, like I'd just tried to kill her. Then we were getting off the bus and she lacked any regard for leash manners and leaped off onto the sidewalk and almost knocked into a guy. And lastly, some idiot was coming down the sidewalk baby talking her and reaching out to pet her and I told her to leave him, and what does she do? Runs forward and tries to leap on the guy all super excited, to which he said "that's ok! I don't mind!" and I'm like (in my head) "That's great for you, but it's really not ok"... gah, puppies sometimes. So embarrassing. I hadn't given her much leash anyway, so she never touched him, but still. She really needs to learn that it's not ok to say hi to people unless I give her the ok. It'd be much easier if people behaved themselves and didn't just reach for her without asking me though. She's such a people dog that it's really hard for her to resist.

I kind of want to get her some kind of a vest that makes it clear that she's friendly but in training and to please not pet her unless given permission... but I dunno, seems weird to put a vest on a pet dog. I guess it bugs me even more because I have a dog that you can't just run up and touch and stare at, so in a lot of ways, it'd be nice to somehow make people stop and think and use their manners. A people training tool is what I need haha. It's not Journ's fault. She can't help herself - she's just learning. But the people of this city really need some canine education! When you have a dog out in public every single day it becomes really apparent how clueless people are. It's annoying.

She seems darn near close to perfect! She's maturing beautifully and it sounds like she's an absolute pleasure to be around. I'm looking forward to show pictures and hearing how she does when she is old enough to compete in flyball/agility.

It must be great to be able to bring her to work with you too.

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The two and a half year old papillon. Crazy. Social butterfly. Clever.